


Deviation #10

by JayBarou



Series: Things that could have been Different in Endgame [9]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, fixit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 14:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18779827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayBarou/pseuds/JayBarou
Summary: The one where returning a soul gives you back a soul too.





	Deviation #10

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UnsolvedRubixsCube](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnsolvedRubixsCube/gifts), [Bat_Gargoyle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bat_Gargoyle/gifts).



  
  


Steve was having a hard time believing his eyes. Red Skull was alive before him... in a distant planet. This shouldn’t be possible, but he remembered Clint’s words about some guide, so it was possible, just very unlikely. His astonishment only grew when Red Skull wasn’t immediately at his throat. They were apparently frozen in the strangeness of the moment, but it slowly made some sense to Steve. They never found a body, and it was the Tesseract what ‘killed’ him, also known as the space stone, of course. They didn’t know exactly what it was back then, but Hydra had made those energy weapons…

“What happened to your victims? The ones you killed with the energy of the Tesseract? Were they just displaced too?”

There was a long stretch of silence. Steve didn’t know if it meant he didn’t know or if he wouldn’t tell. The silence grew uncomfortable and it made Steve wonder because absolutely nothing explained why the man had decided to wear black rags and float. Maybe this wasn’t actually the guy from his youth. Maybe this was some kind of mental test, some kind of hallucination.

By the time the Red Skull deigned to speak, Steve almost jumped. 

“There is nothing for you here, you are late.” His voice sounded needlessly ominous. “You can mourn your lost frau and I’ll leave you to it, but the Soul Stone is not here. It was given-”

“-To Clint, he’s a friend,” Steve cut him. “That’s actually the reason I’m here. To put this where it was.”

The silence got longer and more awkward.

“A soul for a soul, you may say.”

Steve frowned. “And what do you mean with that exactly?”

“A soul for a soul; nothing more, nothing less.”

Steve frowned deeper. This guy couldn’t be the Red Skull. He didn’t speak like him, he didn’t think like him… An AI, like those Siri and Alexa, but more corporeal, that was more likely. An AI guarding the stone. Maybe it had the face of the Red Skull because something had picked up his mind waves. He had seen something like that in a film once.

“I’ll just… be over there…”

He pointed at the cliff where he had been instructed to go. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Red Skull approaching with something akin to curiosity. Still, he wasn’t attacking; it was suspicious.

Steve got the soul stone out and threw it into the abyss, more worried about his former enemy than about the stone. 

“There is a price for the time you spent using the stone, but other than that, things are as they should be”.

“A price? Have we not paid enough?”

But he didn’t have time to shout. A fog dulled his mind and blinded his eyes, drowning everything in a pink-orange mix that reminded him of the dawn on a cloudy day. 

By the time he regained the full use of his body, he was no longer at the cliff. And he didn’t hurt as if he had fallen. He could have noticed how the mountain was quite far away or how he seemed to be sitting on some kind of pool.

His attention was required elsewhere, though, because as soon as he tried to move he noticed the weight on him. A weight that squirmed. Steve wrapped his arms around the weight as soon as he realized it was a child, and a human child at that. A human child in space. He looked around, but they were in the middle of Vormir. No life around, no humans around…

And it suddenly clicked. 

He looked at the girl carefully. This might be one of the strangest things to happen to him, but the little girl had light red hair and her face still had some puppy fat, but he could recognize that face.

He blinked twice, slowly. Steve shrugged, this might as well happen.

**Author's Note:**

> I accept suggestions for more Alternate Endgame ficlets.


End file.
